When your Questions are met with Silence

Have you ever asked a question to your class or a student and you're met with... crickets. Nada. Zilch. Silencio.

“Hoang, what do you think?”

The seconds tick by. The class grows antsy. The blurters are quivering with restraint.

What’s happening in Hoang’s mind right now? What’s going on behind the scenes?

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Perhaps Hoang’s silence is an indication of learned helplessness.

• If I wait long enough, the teacher will call on someone else. It’s worked in the past, why not do it again?
• I could pull out the ‘ol ‘I don’t know’ and cover my head with my hoodie. That always works.
• Maybe I’ll divert attention away from the question and skate by without having to answer. I could fall back in my chair. Or have to go to the bathroom.

💡 TIP: Keep your expectations high!

One of my favorite phrases Jody uses when a student says, “I don’t know” is…

“If you DID know, what would it be?”

You may need to add some scaffolding (heads together, a sentence frame, etc…) but always, always, always, come back to that student to respond.

RESCUING OR CRIPPLING

Another aspect of learned helplessness comes from a good heart. It’s painful to watch a student struggle, for the teacher as well as other students. Sometimes, when a student is taking a long time to respond, the teacher (or another student) will jump in to “save” the student from the uncomfortability of silence.

“It’s OK – who can help Huong with the answer?”

A famous “rescue” phrase we’re heard many, many times from well-meaning teammates is,

“But he doesn’t speak English.”

The teammate then responds on behalf of Hoang.

Such well-intended support ends up creating learned helplessness and crippling Hoang’s sense of personal value, belonging, voice, participation and language development.

Instead – provide the scaffolding to ensure Hoang’s success.

💡 TIP: Offer sentence stems or frames to support responses.
💡 TIP: Call on students equally – regardless of language level.

We use a strategy called “Numbered Heads” (see Acceleration 101) for this purpose. The student whose number is called reports on behalf of their team. The team can provide the answer word by word to their reporter, but it’s the reporter’s voice that is honored, listened to, and supported.

HIGH AFFECTIVE FILTER (Stress)

Sometimes a silent response is not about learned helplessness, but the sudden inability to retrieve the information or language needed due to stress.

When you put me on the spot, my thought process stops.

Ever tried to speak coherently when you’re extra tired, stressed or furious? Good luck. That’s the amazing survival response of our amygdalas.

Warning – stress alert. Shut down fast before getting hurt.

The amygdala “bouncers” jump into action, bulging arms crossed, blocking entrance to the rest of the brain – where reasoning, memory and language are accessed.

💡 TIP: Lower the stress level by creating a collaborative, supporting environment.

When asking a question, have students talk to another student, or their team, and then ask for a response on behalf of the partners' or team’s thinking. The student has the full support of their partner or team when responding.

• If you're doing whole class instruction with students “on the carpet,” have students turn and talk to their “elbow partner” before sharing responses.
• If students are at their desks, arrange the desks in teams of 3-4 and have teams “put their heads together” before taking any responses.

WAIT TIME

A silent response from an emerging multilingual learner, could signal needing more time to process the information, hear it again in kid language (negotiate for meaning), and practice talking about it in the target language, before being ready to respond in front of the whole class.

Silence while waiting for an answer may feeling uncomfortable, but processing takes time. Even more so for our multilingual students. It takes time to translate a question, process the content, and then translate it back into the target language as a response. That’s double the work of a native speaker and deserves time.

Mary Budd Rowe was one of the first professors to study wait time and highlight its importance in the classroom. Her early research has been validated time and again over the years. Even a 3 second wait time increased the response rate 300-700% (for native English speakers within her studies).

Wait time is “one of the most underused weapons that an instructor has at his/her disposal.” - Dan Lewy

💡 TIP: Teach your students the value and purpose of wait time.
💡 TIP: After asking a question, slowly count to 5-10 in your head.
💡 TIP: Embed wait time by having students put their heads together before asking individual students to respond.

Today is a good day to start turning that silence into scaffolded and expected engagement!

Which one will you focus on this week?
• Keeping expectations high
• Offer sentence stems or frames to support responses
• Create equity and value of all voices by using “Numbered Heads”
• Provide a Turn and Talk (10:2) or Heads Together before asking for responses
• Teach and model wait time (for all students)

For support with all these tips, join us in the Next Steps Coaching Membership!

Cheering for you and your students, 

Jody Bader & Dr. Sara Martinez

https://www.nextstepsprojectglad.com

[email protected]